It’s easy to get caught thinking about progress in only one dimension. An axis along which we can move only forward or backward.

This view has us focus on a limited number of tasks, milestones and goals that are generally accepted to signify “progress”.

While those signals of progress might matter to others, however, if we’re seeking to create something that hasn’t come before, to do work that really matters, we need to take a more nuanced view of what progress really looks like, and how our actions contribute to it.

Progress could mean checking items off your to-do list.

Or adding to it.

It could mean putting in a focused day’s work.

Or taking it off to recharge.

Progress might be filling the pages of your notebook.

Or tearing them out and burning them.

It could be speeding up.

Or slowing down.

Onboarding new clients.

Or offboarding old ones.

Building a team.

Or dismantling it.

Progress could mean sitting still, staring at the blank wall in front of you, allowing yourself to slip into boredom.

Or writing 1000 uninspired words of drivel simply in order to fulfil your daily commitment.

When we’re able to recognize and embrace the many forms of progress, we’re more likely to recognize the progress we’re making, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

This perspective is essential.

Creating anything that matters is a long game. One sure to be filled with long seasons of sowing so we can reap in the future.

The most difficult form of progress to embody might be the patience required when we’ve planted our seeds and are left with nothing to do but wait for the conditions to come about for those seeds to begin to sprout.

In this limbo, progress might simply mean recentering ourselves and waiting for those first shoots to poke their way through the soil.

So that we might be prepared, ready to spring into action when the season for action once again arrives.

With a long enough view, we see that it’s all progress in the end.

And we would do well to remember that.

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